re: Disc PvP -The How's an What's

It would appear that some of the other classes are creating some introductory guides for beginners, and while this isn’t a competition, I don’t like seeing our Priest forums falling behind…so before the druids get wise I’m putting up a quick little number on the commonly accepted Discipline talent build, as well as some tidbits on the play style.

This is the basic foundation for any PvP Disc Priest, there are 7 points left to further flesh out your build so let’s look at our choices for a moment. Every PvP priest worth their salt is going to want Desperate Prayer, and as you can see with the build so far we already have 3 of the 5 points needed to open it up. There are two remaining choices for us to put those next 2 points and they are: Divine Fury (reduces cast time of Smite/Holy Fire/Heal and GHeal), Improved Renew (increase amount healed by Renew).

Fairly straightforward, one will reduce the amount of time spent casting and the other increase the amount healed by your HoT ability. If you find yourself casting Renew a great deal, I would recommend the later choice. If you do not, then save yourself the headache and just get Divine Fury. Neither one of them are what I would consider “earth shattering” and we really just want to get to the second tier in the holy tree.

After you make that gut wrenching decision, you will pick Desperate Prayer and once again have a choice to make. There are two options remaining: Surge of Light (chance to proc a free insta Flash Heal) or Inspiration (crit heals reduce target’s phys damage taken for 15sec).

Either way you will have to deal with a bit of random luck, but basically the choice comes down to either getting a free heal to proc or you buff someone to take less damage. If you find yourself running low on mana constantly, or you hardly ever match up against any melee/hunter teams, then odds are you’d love SoL. If mana is never really an issue and you are constantly getting matched up against Warr/DK’s, then you’d probably fall in love with Inspiration.

Finally we’re down to the last 2 points left in our build. There a number of options here, we could go back and pick up Renew/Divine (depending on which one we took previously). We could pick up SoL/Inspiration (again, depending on our initial pick). We could go back to the Disc tree and get Reflective Shield (highly recommend for 2v2 arena fun), or Train of Thought to lower cooldowns. We could pick up either Darkness (Haste buff yay) or Veiled Shadows (More Shadowfiend Please) in the Shadow tree. So depending on how you’re playing your priest, and what format (BG’s or Arena’s) the choice is up to you.

The talents you won’t get are Evangelism (Only works with Smite/HolyFire, neither of which we should be casting), Attonement (smite healing is asking for trouble in any PvP format, so don’t do it) and Improved Shadow Word: Pain (the only thing weaker than our HoT is our DoT, again don’t do it).

Now that we’ve gone over the talents and built our PvP Disc, let’s take a quick glance at the glyphs we’ll predominantly be using.

There are basically two prime glyphs that are always used by any PvP Disc, and they are Penance and PW: Shield. Penance is a reduction of the cooldown (CD) by 2 sec’s, and PW: Shield allows for 20% of the amount absorbed to heal the target. The final third slot could go to one of the following three choices: Renew, Power Word: Barrier, Shadow Word: Death. Obviously if you choose to take Improved Renew talent then the Renew glyph is for you. If you did not then I would encourage you to ignore it and pick up either PW:B or SW:D instead. The barrier glyph will increase your heals on those under it, and SW:D glyph allows for a second SW:D to be cast on targets at (or under) 25% HP.

Just like the prime glyphs, there are two must have Major glyphs: Prayer of Mending and Mass Dispel. Some options for the third Major slot are: Desperation (allows Pain Suppression/Guardian Spirit to be cast while stunned), Fear Ward (reduce CD by 1min), Dispel Magic (heals your target for 3% of their HP when you dispel them) and Inner Fire (increase your armor bonus by 50%). Desperation is nice for when those pesky Pally’s hit you with Hammer of Justice as their team is trying to burn your teammate/FC. Inner Fire is also great for dealing with pesky melee in generally, and Dispel Magic (while not a huge heal) can help out tremendously with cc happy teams.